English Skills with Readings 7th Edition by John Langan

Exercise 16

See if you can identify the ten sentence-skills mistakes in paragraph B. Do this, first of all, by going back and underlining the ten spots in paragraph B that differ 5 in wording or punctuation from paragraph A. Then try to identify the ten sentence- skills mistakes by circling what you feel is the correct answer in each of the ten statements below.
HINT Comparing paragraph B with the correct version may help you guess correct answers even if you are not familiar with the names of certain skills.
1. The title should not be set off with
a. capital letters.
b. quotation marks.
2. In word group 2, there is a
a. missing comma.
b. missing apostrophe.
c. sentence fragment.
d. dangling modifi er.
3. In word group 3, there is a
a. run-on.
b. sentence fragment.
c. mistake in subject-verb
agreement.
d. mistake involving an irregular
verb.
4. In word group 5, there is a
a. sentence fragment.
b. spelling error.
c. run-on.
d. mistake in subject-verb verb. agreement.
5. In word group 7, there is
a. misplaced modifier.
b. dangling modifier.
c. mistake in parallelism. verb.
d. run-on.
6. In word group 8, there is a
a. nonstandard English verb.
b. run-on.
c. comma mistake.
d. missing capital letter.
7. In word group 11, there is a
a. mistake involving an irregular
b. sentence fragment.
c. slang phrase.
d. mistake in subject-verb agreement.
8. In word group 12, there is a
a. missing apostrophe.
b. missing comma.
c. mistake involving an irregular
verb.
d. sentence fragment.
9. In word group 13, there is a
a. missing quotation mark.
b. mistake involving an irregular
verb.
c. missing apostrophe.
d. missing capital letter.
10. In word group 15, there is a
a. mistake in parallelism.
b. mistake involving an irregular
verb.
c. sentence fragment.
d. mistake in pronoun point of
view.
You should have chosen the following answers:
1. b 2. c 3. a 4. d 5. c
6. a 7. c 8. b 9. c 10. c
Part Five of this book explains these and other sentence skills. You should review all the skills carefully. Doing so will ensure that you know the most important rules of grammar, punctuation, and usage-rules needed to write clear, error- free sentences.